WA's Hard Border Legacy: What Pandemic Border Closures Revealed About Federalism
By Direct Democracy
The Policy That Divided a Nation
From April 2020 to March 2022, Western Australia operated one of the most restrictive internal border regimes in the democratic world. At its peak, Australians - citizens of the same country, subject to the same federal Constitution - needed government permission to cross a state line. Exemptions were limited, policed, and frequently denied. Families were separated. Funerals were missed. Workers were stranded.
Most Australians accepted early border closures as a reasonable emergency response. The controversy isn't really about 2020. It's about what happened after that - and what the whole episode exposed about who actually holds power in Australia, and how little accountability they face.
The Timeline: When 'Temporary' Became Indefinite
By late 2021, every other Australian state had moved toward national reopening, guided by the Federal Government's agreed National Plan - a framework that set vaccination thresholds for lifting restrictions. The plan was developed by National Cabinet, signed off by all premiers including WA's Mark McGowan, and backed by federal health advice.
WA ignored it.
- December 2021: The rest of Australia reopened borders as vaccination targets were met. WA delayed.
- January 2022: WA delayed again, citing Omicron, despite epidemiologists noting the state's own logic no longer held.
- February 2022: Border finally opened on 3 March 2022 - nearly four months after the agreed national trigger was reached.
McGowan's government enjoyed stratospheric approval ratings for much of this period. His personal polling reached figures rarely seen in Australian politics - at times above 80% approval. That popularity made him almost impossible to challenge, and it insulated the policy from scrutiny it deserved.
Who Was Actually Hurt?
The costs of prolonged closure were not evenly distributed.
Families and individuals: Thousands of West Australians living interstate - and Australians with family in WA - faced bureaucratic obstacle courses to obtain exemptions. The WA government's exemption system was administered inconsistently, with little independent oversight or right of appeal. People missed the deaths of parents and partners. Others were denied the chance to attend their own weddings.
Workers and businesses: The construction and resources sectors faced critical labour shortages. The WA Government's own modelling, released under FOI pressure, acknowledged significant economic drag from skills gaps. Hospitality businesses, already battered, couldn't recruit. The tourism industry - which had been worth $12.6 billion annually to WA before the pandemic - effectively flatlined for domestic visitors.
Smaller states: WA's border closure was partly made possible by its structural position as a GST revenue donor state - it had the fiscal buffer to absorb economic friction. States like Tasmania and South Australia, more dependent on interstate tourism and labour mobility, had far less capacity to sustain similar policies.
The Constitutional Question That Wasn't Answered
Here's where it gets genuinely troubling for anyone who cares about how Australia is governed.
Section 92 of the Australian Constitution states that trade, commerce, and intercourse among the states shall be absolutely free. The High Court had previously held that this protects individuals' right to move between states.
A legal challenge - Palmer v Western Australia - reached the High Court in 2021. The Court upheld WA's border closure, finding that the severity of COVID-19 justified the burden on Section 92. The ruling was reasonable given the circumstances at the time of the hearing. But the Court never revisited the question as circumstances changed - as vaccines rolled out, as national plans were agreed, as the epidemiological justification weakened.
No court, no parliament, and no independent body ever formally assessed whether WA's closure remained legally or ethically justified in the final months. The policy simply continued because the government was popular enough that no one could stop it.
That's not a health outcome. That's a governance failure.
Why Did It Persist? Follow the Politics
McGowan's approach was electorally rational. WA held a state election in March 2021 - in the middle of the border closure. Labor won 53 of 59 lower house seats. It was one of the most lopsided electoral victories in Australian history.
The border wasn't just a health policy. It became a political identity - 'WA First', border pride, a sense that the state was protecting itself from the eastern states. That sentiment had deep roots in WA's long history of federalism grievances, including the GST distribution fight.
The Federal Government - Scott Morrison's Coalition - was caught in an impossible position. Politically, publicly attacking a wildly popular state premier looked petty. Economically, WA's resources boom was propping up national GDP figures they wanted to take credit for. So they applied minimal pressure, and the National Plan they had championed was quietly abandoned as a binding commitment.
Both major parties failed here. Labor federally criticised Morrison's handling of the pandemic broadly but was reluctant to directly attack a Labor state government running record approval ratings. The Coalition was too politically weak and distracted to enforce its own framework. The National Plan became a suggestion.
What Direct Democracy Would Have Changed
Consider what the policy actually looked like when broken down into specific questions:
| Question | Likely public preference |
|---|---|
| Close borders during acute COVID emergency (early 2020)? | Strong support |
| Maintain closure once vaccines hit 80%+ targets? | More divided |
| Override agreed national framework for political reasons? | Contested |
| Deny Australians access to dying relatives? | Widespread opposition |
Aggregate polling masked enormous variation in how people felt about specific elements of the policy. Approval of 'the border' didn't mean approval of every decision made under that banner.
In a direct democracy model, citizens could have voted on the specific thresholds, the exemption framework, and the commitment to national agreements - separately, with real information, at regular intervals. Instead, voters got one binary choice at election time, and a premier with 80% approval had effectively unchecked authority for years.
When executive power is popular, it's invisible. That's precisely when democratic checks matter most.
The Lesson Australia Hasn't Learned
WA's hard border wasn't simply a pandemic policy. It was a demonstration of how far Australian governments can go when they have electoral cover, a compliant opposition, limited judicial oversight, and no mechanism for citizens to vote on the actual decisions being made.
Federalism was meant to distribute power. What the pandemic showed is that it can also distribute unaccountability - giving premiers enormous powers with few checks beyond the ballot box, and a ballot box that only comes around every four years.
The families separated by WA's border deserved better than to wait for an election.
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